Due togati in veste di Fratres arvales? Marco Aurelio Mattei e Lucio Vero a Palazzo Giusti (Verona)

The article presents two unpublished sculptures preserved at Palazzo Giusti in Verona, the emperors Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus as Fratres Arvales. The essay investigates the hypothetical context of origin (Venice, Palazzo Molin in San Stin) and the provenance of the statues from the Roman market of antiquities, especially Marcus Aurelius from the Mattei collection. It traces also the history of an unusual iconography, the one of the emperor as Frater Arvalis, examining the events of the sixteenth century, which involve Pirro Ligorio and Baldassarre and Sallustio Peruzzi, and those of the eighteenth century, connected to the formation of the Museo Pio Clementino, as well as the nineteenth-century excavations carried out by Wilhelm Henzen in the Magliana area in Rome